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Sony MiniDV - stands for the tapes used.
There are several tape standards, from which the MiniDV tapes are practically the best.
As for the camcorder itself, sony has the following models:
Sony DCR 12E - no remote control
Sony DCR 14E - remote but no Firewire Input (only output, you cant transfer video back to the camera)
Sony DCR 19E - has remote, has firewire in/out
Sony DCR 22E - has everything + a few more special effects
Sony DCR 33E - has everything + a few more special effects
Mechanically the are the same, Carl Zeiss lens, great night shots, great picture quality, low noise from the motor. You made a wise choise with your camera. I recently (2 weeks ago) bought Sony DCR - TRV 19E which is $200 or $300 cheaper than your model. I love the quality.
Btw forget about transferring the video to the PC if you haven't got a fast PC (2 GHz processor, 512 mb ram and SCSI hard drive for editing and 200GB ide for storage) - because 1 hour of video takes 13 GB of space. You'll have to encode your videos to the divX (mpeg 2) format in order to store them. And encoding takes 3-5 hours on a fast pc (per 1 hour of video).
Make sure you get a better battery. The stock battery you have lasts 1 hour max. There are batteries ($200) that last 10-13 hours.
Another tip, stick to one brand of tapes. I prefer Sony MiniDV (premium) - around $5.
Currently I am not transferring the videos to the pc, I just keep them on tapes.
Have fun ;)
B
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